Re: [ubl-dev] Question about (in progress) UBL 2.1

["G. Ken Holman" <gkholman@CraneSoftwrights.com>]

(speaking only for myself and not as an official TC member; Steve, 
such a question should be sent to the comment list for an official answer)

At 2010-07-29 09:09 +0100, Stephen Green wrote:
>Nice to see that UBL 2.1 is coming along well.

Thanks!

>Just a question regarding how it has been kept compatible with UBL 2.0:
>
>Presumably the compatibility has been maintained at model level via
>some rules of some sort

Indeed.  But I don't think these were ever articulated.

>but are these rules the fully published in the latest customisation guide

No, because that is not a guideline for the creation of 2.x+1 (which 
is a TC responsibility), it is a guideline for people to create 
customizations (subsets and user extensions) of 2.x (for their own 
use).  Different task and different audience.

>and if so, is that the one on the UBL TC home page,
>i.e. http://docs.oasis-open.org/ubl/guidelines/UBL2-Customization1.0cs01.pdf ?
>If not, are rules for progressing from a UBL version 2.x to a version 2.x+1
>going to be published?

I can't recall that being an action item, and I'm not sure that is 
important to the UBL user outside of the TC.  Though, of course, all 
TC documents are made publicly available, so if we *had* such a 
document you would get to see it.

Note that in light of the importance of *measuring* that version 
2.x+1 is backward compatible with 2.x, there are checks that can be 
done after the fact, rather than rules that are followed during the 
process.  Indeed, these checks identified a number of 
backwards-compatibility issues through the process, each of which 
were addressed in turn until we finally have a 2.1 that appears by 
all programmatic checks I could conceive to be fully backward 
compatible with 2.0.

   http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/ubl/201005/msg00013.html
   http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/ubl/201006/msg00033.html
   http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/ubl/201007/msg00017.html
   (and others)

... culminating in my report to the TC yesterday:

   http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/ubl/201007/msg00043.html

... where you can see there are zero detected errors in all of the 
areas related to backwards compatibility.

Of course when the 2.1 public review draft schemas are out in the 
wild we may discover new issues of backwards compatibility that can 
be added to the programmatic checks.

But, hand on heart, I'm quite confident *every* schema-valid UBL 2.0 
instance will be considered schema-valid with the draft UBL 2.1 
schemas.  I'm hoping to be proved right or wrong so that we know any 
outstanding issues are addressed.

Thanks for the question!

. . . . . . . . . . Ken

--
XSLT/XQuery training:   after http://XMLPrague.cz 2011-03-28/04-01
Vote for your XML training:   http://www.CraneSoftwrights.com/u/i/
Crane Softwrights Ltd.          http://www.CraneSoftwrights.com/u/
G. Ken Holman                 mailto:gkholman@CraneSoftwrights.com
Male Cancer Awareness Nov'07  http://www.CraneSoftwrights.com/u/bc
Legal business disclaimers:  http://www.CraneSoftwrights.com/legal